What is WooCommerce? A complete guide to features, pricing, and use cases

If you're thinking about launching an online store and already have (or plan to build) a WordPress site, WooCommerce is probably the first name you'll encounter. It powers over 30% of all online stores worldwide, making it the most widely used e-commerce platform on the planet.

But getting a store live is just the beginning. Once orders start coming in, the real work begins: managing inventory, syncing customers to your CRM, notifying your team about new sales, and keeping everything running across tools. That's where automation with IFTTT comes into play.

In this guide, we'll walk through what WooCommerce is, what you can sell with it, how it works, how much it costs, and how IFTTT can help you automate your store, so you spend less time managing and more time growing.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a free, open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. Originally developed by WooThemes and acquired by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) in 2015, it transforms any WordPress website into a fully functional online store.

Unlike hosted platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce, where your store lives on someone else's servers, WooCommerce is self-hosted. You install it on your own WordPress site, which means you own your store, your data, and your customer relationships completely. That ownership is both WooCommerce's biggest strength and its primary trade-off.

WooCommerce is free to install, but running a real store typically involves paid extensions, a hosting plan, and potentially a developer. More on that in the pricing section.

What can you sell on WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is designed to sell almost anything. Out of the box, it handles physical products like apparel, furniture, electronics, and handmade goods, complete with inventory management, shipping zones, and weight-based rates. It also supports digital products like ebooks, music, software, and photography, with secure file delivery handled automatically and no shipping required.

For stores with product options, WooCommerce supports variable products. A t-shirt in multiple sizes and colors, for example, where each variation can carry its own price, SKU, and stock level. Recurring revenue models are covered too, with subscriptions available via the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension for memberships, box services, and software. If your business is service-based, the WooCommerce Bookings extension handles appointments, consultations, classes, and rentals. You can also list affiliate products that link out to external listings, or bundle multiple items together into packages at a discounted price.

With the right extensions, WooCommerce can go even further, handling B2B wholesale pricing, multi-vendor marketplaces, and auction-style listings. If you can imagine it, there's likely a WooCommerce extension for it.

How does WooCommerce work?

WooCommerce works as a plugin layered on top of WordPress. Once installed, it adds a full e-commerce engine to your WordPress admin, covering everything from product management and order processing to payment handling and customer accounts.

Products are created just like WordPress blog posts, with fields for title, description, images, and price, plus WooCommerce-specific attributes like SKU, weight, and dimensions. Payments are handled through dozens of supported gateways including Stripe, PayPal, Square, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, either built in or available via extensions. Shipping is managed through configurable zones by country, state, or zip code, with flat-rate, free, or carrier-calculated options and label printing built into the dashboard.

Every purchase generates a detailed order record with customer information, line items, payment status, and fulfillment notes, all manageable directly from your WordPress admin. Taxes can be calculated automatically based on customer location or configured manually, with integrations like TaxJar handling automated US sales tax compliance. And the extension ecosystem, with over 800 official options, lets you layer on capabilities like abandoned cart recovery, loyalty programs, and custom checkout fields as your store grows.

Because WooCommerce is open source, developers can customize virtually every aspect of the store in ways that closed platforms simply don't allow.

Is WooCommerce free?

WooCommerce the plugin is free to download and install, but running a real store involves several costs worth understanding. Hosting is typically the biggest line item. Managed WooCommerce hosting starts at around $15-30/month with providers like SiteGround, WP Engine, or Kinsta, scaling up with traffic and store size. A domain name adds about $10-15/year, and SSL (required for secure checkout) is usually included free by most hosts via Let's Encrypt.

Beyond infrastructure, a premium WooCommerce theme runs $40-100 as a one-time cost and meaningfully improves design and conversion compared to free options. Extensions vary widely, from free to $299/year each, and a fully-featured store might rely on three to eight of them covering subscriptions, bookings, payment gateways, and email marketing. Payment processing fees from Stripe or PayPal add roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction on top of that.

For a lean store, you can realistically launch for $20-40/month all-in. A more feature-rich operation typically runs $100-200/month. Compared to Shopify, which starts at $39/month before apps, WooCommerce can be significantly cheaper, especially at higher transaction volumes where per-transaction fees add up.

WooCommerce vs. Shopify: what's the difference?

WooCommerce and Shopify are the two most popular e-commerce platforms in the world, but they serve different types of store owners. Here's how they compare:

Ownership: WooCommerce is self-hosted and open source, meaning you own your store, your data, and your infrastructure completely. Shopify is a hosted SaaS platform, so you're renting space on their servers. It's simpler to manage, but with less control.
Ease of setup: Shopify wins here. You can have a store live in an afternoon with no technical knowledge required. WooCommerce involves setting up WordPress, choosing hosting, and configuring the plugin, which takes more time but gives you significantly more control over the end result.
Customization: WooCommerce is nearly infinitely flexible, especially for developers. Shopify keeps you within the bounds of their platform, and you hit walls more quickly on deeply custom requirements.
Pricing: Shopify charges $39-399/month plus app fees. WooCommerce has no platform fee and your costs come from hosting and extensions. WooCommerce tends to win on cost at scale; Shopify is easier to budget at the start.
Ecosystem: Shopify has around 8,000 apps compared to WooCommerce's 800+ official extensions, though the broader WordPress plugin library fills many gaps.
Support: Shopify offers 24/7 dedicated support. WooCommerce support is spread across documentation, community forums, and your hosting provider.

The bottom line: choose Shopify if you want simplicity and a managed experience. Choose WooCommerce if you want full ownership, maximum flexibility, and you're comfortable with, or willing to hire for, some technical setup.

What are WooCommerce's limitations?

WooCommerce is powerful, but it's not the right fit for everyone. The most significant trade-off is technical overhead. Unlike Shopify, which handles updates, security, and infrastructure automatically, WooCommerce puts that responsibility on you. Plugin conflicts, hosting issues, and security patches all require your attention, or a developer's.

Performance at scale is another consideration. Without proper hosting and caching, large stores with tens of thousands of SKUs or significant traffic can run slow. Shopify scales automatically; WooCommerce requires intentional infrastructure planning to get there. Cost creep is also worth watching. Essential features like subscriptions, advanced reporting, and bookings all require paid extensions, and it's easy to accumulate a stack of annual renewals that rivals a Shopify plan.

A few other gaps are worth noting. There's no built-in multi-currency support, so international selling requires additional extensions. Support is decentralized, meaning issues could involve your host, your theme, a specific plugin, or WordPress core, and figuring out which one takes time. And unlike Shopify's paid plans, WooCommerce doesn't include native abandoned cart recovery, which is one of the highest-ROI features in e-commerce and requires a third-party plugin to replicate.

How IFTTT works with WooCommerce

WooCommerce runs your store and IFTTT connects it to everything else. Whether you want instant Slack alerts for new orders, automatic customer records in your CRM, or inventory updates synced from other platforms, IFTTT bridges WooCommerce with your broader tool stack without any custom code.

IFTTT connects to WooCommerce through three triggers and two actions. On the trigger side, you can fire workflows when a new order is placed, when an order moves to paid or processing status, or when a new customer registers in your store. On the action side, IFTTT can create a new customer record in WooCommerce or update the stock quantity on an existing product, making two-way sync with other platforms possible.

From order notifications to inventory sync to CRM updates, IFTTT turns WooCommerce into a connected hub so your store works hand-in-hand with every tool in your business, automatically.

Top WooCommerce Applets

Frequently asked questions about WooCommerce

What is WooCommerce used for?

WooCommerce is used to build and run online stores on WordPress. It's commonly used for selling physical products, digital downloads, subscriptions, bookings, and services. Beyond individual merchants, WooCommerce powers everything from small Etsy-style shops to large multi-product catalogs and B2B wholesale operations.

How much does WooCommerce cost?

WooCommerce itself is free. A typical all-in cost for a small store, including hosting, a domain, SSL, and a theme, runs $20-50/month. Adding premium extensions for subscriptions, bookings, or advanced shipping can bring the total to $100-200/month or more, depending on which features your store needs.

How do I install WooCommerce?

Installing WooCommerce takes just a few minutes:

• - Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
• - Go to Plugins and click Add New.
• - Search for "WooCommerce" and click Install Now.
• - Click Activate once the installation completes.
• - Follow the WooCommerce Setup Wizard to configure your store's currency, location, payment methods, and shipping.

Most managed WordPress hosts like SiteGround, WP Engine, and Bluehost also offer one-click WooCommerce installation during initial site setup.

How do I set up WooCommerce?

After installation, the Setup Wizard covers the core configuration: store address and currency, payment gateways, shipping zones and rates, and recommended extensions. From there, here's what to tackle next:

• - Add your first products under Products > Add New.
• - Configure your tax settings under WooCommerce > Settings > Tax.
• - Customize your store pages for shop, cart, checkout, and account.
• - Set up your email notifications under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails.
• - Run a test purchase before going live to make sure the full checkout flow works as expected.

For more advanced needs like custom checkout fields, multi-currency, or subscriptions, you'll explore the extension library or bring in a developer.

How do I manage inventory in WooCommerce?

WooCommerce includes built-in inventory management for tracking stock levels, low-stock alerts, and backorders. To enable it, go to WooCommerce Settings, then Products, then Inventory, and check the stock management option.

From there, you can set stock quantities on each individual product's edit page and configure low-stock and out-of-stock thresholds that trigger automatic email alerts. For variable products with different sizes or colors, stock can be tracked at the variation level so each option has its own count.

If you're selling across multiple channels, the IFTTT "Update product stock" action lets you automatically adjust WooCommerce inventory when orders are processed in Square or other connected platforms, keeping everything in sync without manual updates.

IFTTT and WooCommerce: better together

Whether you're syncing new customers to your CRM, updating inventory across sales channels, or getting instant alerts when orders come in, IFTTT automates the handoffs that would otherwise eat up your time. No code, no developers, no duct-taped spreadsheets. Just your tools working together the way they should.

Ready to put your WooCommerce store on automatic? Start your free IFTTT trial today.